The latest addition to my website is Niviaq Korneliussen‘s Homo sapienne (UK: Crimson; US: Last Night in Nuuk). The UK and US editions have different titles, with the UK title coming from one of the character’s favourite songs. In addition the UK title was published 1 November 2018 while the US edition is not published … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ali Smith‘s Winter. This is the second novel in her seasonal tetralogy. It tells the story of a dysfunctional family. The oldest sister, Iris, has strong left-wing views and is thrown out of the house by her father. Sophia, her younger sister, behaves and is responsible and goes … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ersi Sotiropoulos‘ Τι μενει απο τη νυχτα (What’s Left of the Night). The novel tells of three days in June 1897 spent by Greek poet C(onstantine) P Cavafy and his older brother, John. The family has fallen on hard times, so money is tight. Cavafy himself struggles with … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hye Young-Pyun‘s 재와 빨강 (City of Ash and Red). This a grim Kafkaesque story about an unnamed man from an unnamed country, who works for a pesticide company. He is sent to the head office of the company, which is located in another country, where he barely speaks … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Nicole Lundrigan‘s Thaw. The novel is set in the small Newfoundland town of Cupboard Cove and tells the story of two people who live there, as well as of their families. Tilley Gover is a sensitive boy with a loving mother but an aggressive and macho father and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hye Young-Pyun‘s 홀 (The Hole), a disturbing Korean novel about a paralysed man. Oghi has a successful career as a professor of cartography, though his wife has not been able to succeed at any career and nor have they have had any children. At the beginning of the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Dubravka Ugrešić‘s Forsiranje romana-reke (Fording the Stream of Consciousness). This is a wonderful, witty satire on literary conferences. The setting is a literary conference in Zagreb, while Yugoslavia was still a country, and Ugrešić manages to mock numerous nationalities and their foibles, but, not surprisingly, with a special … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ali Smith‘s Autumn. This is the first in Ali Smith’s four Seasons series of novels and, apparently, the first post-Brexit novel. It tells the story of Elisabeth Demand who, when a young child, lives next door to Daniel Gluck, a man sixty-nine years older than her, who becomes … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Pat Barker‘s The Silence of the Girls. This is a feminist retelling of the Trojan War, based primarily on The Iliad. It is narrated mainly by Briseis, wife of King Mynes of Lyrnessus, an ally of Troy conquered by the Greeks before they conquer Troy. Briseis is captured … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Nicole Lundrigan‘s Unraveling Arva. Set in Newfoundland, Lundrigan’s home province, this novel tells the story of Arva House. Both parents drowned, her father, apparently, after having drunk too much and her mother by suicide. She is now looking after Old Man Crane, an elderly and sick man, when … Read more